A checklist comprises a record of event data corresponding to a plurality of event heads under consideration. Checklists may be used to record information verifying or assessing performance of one or more tasks within a process, and serve as informational aids which reduce likelihood of error or failure. Employing checklists in task management offers multiple advantages, for creating, scheduling or managing a list of tasks or actions, including ensuring consistency and completeness in execution, enabling delegation or supervision, and statistical treatment of task performance data. Currently checklists are widely used across in various domains, including without limitation industrial automation, medicine and pharmaceuticals, sports and games, aviation industry, manufacturing and packaging, software and information technology.
It has been observed that organizations use multiple checklists, and that checklists for each task or domain typically tend to have a different format and are designed to record differing content. Additionally, while organizations rely extensively on checklist assessments, the checklists in use are often paper based, or in some cases are electronic checklists which implement data entry and data storage by way of word processing application software or spreadsheet application software. Data entry using paper based checklists or such electronic checklists has therefore been found to result in a large number of discrete collections of checklist data, which is unconsolidated and therefore difficult to evaluate from an organizational perspective. Other disadvantages include difficulty in aggregating, analysing, and controlling data. Such checklists offer limited user interactivity and also limited flexibility in customization.
The advantages of electronic checklists implemented using database systems are therefore apparent. US 2004/0059510 teaches a reporting system for orderly accumulation of safety system test data that can be used for operational analyses, reliability studies, and reports that may be required by regulatory agencies, A user may input appropriate platform-specific testing/compliance data into a web page that is essentially an operational model of each user's production and safety processes on that specific platform.
Despite the advantages of implementing electronic checklists on database systems, porting existing paper based or non-database electronic checklists to a database system has not been widely implemented, since the process requires time, effort, and specific coding skills. By way of example, US20140040198 teaches changing data entry templates using MS excel and propagating the changed templates to all machines that will use the template. This technique however involves changing the format of previously stored data records, which involves database manipulation knowledge and skills.
Similarly, while U.S. Pat. No. 8,527,870 teaches generation of a unified electronic data format template, based on pre-existing templates, the prior art reference requires embedding of logic/coding within a first electronic format, which is then converted into a unified electronic data format template.
There is accordingly a need for generating electronic checklist templates and database implemented electronic checklists based on pre-existing non-database implemented checklists, which can be by modified or customized without specialized programming or coding expertise.